By Marc Fisher
Thursday, March 16, 2006

All those snazzy drawings and computer graphics of the Washington Nationals' new stadium depict a neighborhood that never was and will not be even when the ballpark opens.

Commuters who slog along South Capitol between downtown and the Frederick Douglass bridge know that the stately, tree-lined boulevard in the architects' plans is not the decrepit and clogged street they've come to loathe.

Where the drawings show a broad, welcoming plaza leading into the emerald showplace, the stadium will really sit hard by a rusting, rattling, dispiriting old hulk of a highway ramp. Visitors will be slapped with the contrast between baseball's island of luxury and the surrounding sea of urban reality.

But the plans released this week are a vision of the future, and indeed the District has an impressive concept for a new Anacostia River bridge and a reconfiguration of South Capitol Street that would replace the ugly ramp with green space. The truth, however, is that for quite some years, the stadium will come smack up against the city's befouled underside.

Which isn't all bad. The whole debate over baseball came down to competing ideas about how to cope with the jaw-dropping inequalities in a city divided between rich and poor, with precious little in between. Baseball might not be for everyone, the winning argument went, but it will help all.

You need a good imagination to see that now. Yesterday, when I stopped by the New Good and Plenty Carryout, a decrepit lunch spot that sits just beyond what will one day be left-center field, the owner grumbled about how no one has told him a thing about the stadium or when he'll have to vacate.

Outside, a guy in a wheelchair rolled himself back and forth over one of the random bricks strewn across the pavement. "That's my [blanking] sport, man," he said when I asked about his pastime. Nobody I spoke to at Half and N streets SE knew the stadium plans had been released.

But change is coming, fast. The southern edge of Chinatown was a seedy mess before Abe Pollin built his MCI Center. (The place just got a new corporate name, but for me, it's the Pollin Center from here on. When they start with willy-nilly name changes, I pick a moniker and stick with it.) Now, on the arena's Seventh Street side, you feel the energy of the city.

Similarly, the baseball stadium's South Capitol Street side will feature a hard edge that is a nod to the sports palaces of nearly a century ago, buildings nestled into unique urban spaces with odd angles. In the Nats' new home, there will even be a beautifully illogical notch in the centerfield wall (a tribute to the late Griffith Stadium, where the Senators and the Homestead Grays played).

Rather than plopping one more suburban bowl into a city, the architects at HOK Sport of Kansas City and Devrouax & Purnell of the District looked beyond the debris of the current site and created a ballpark to fit into a neighborhood that does not yet exist.

Much of the stadium design is sleek and elegant, with a glass, steel and limestone-like concrete exterior far superior to the red brick that D.C. Council member Jack Evans had demanded.

But what's odd about the design is that it's backward. The main entrance is on the south, where hardly anyone will enter. Where would they come from? Would they swim in from Prince George's or Virginia?

No, both Metro riders and motorists will approach from the north, where, rather than a grand entrance, the architects offer a cramped plaza sandwiched between two boxy parking structures.

But wait: Those boxes are really a political ploy and a sales pitch. The D.C. Council nixed the money for underground parking, but designers nonetheless intend to put the parking below ground, as they should. The ghastly parking towers are in the drawings to scare the Nationals' new owner and developers into coughing up the $28 million needed to dig the hole for parking; investors would then get the right to build retail, residential or offices above the garage.

The trick will be to make certain those buildings are low or graduated enough not to overwhelm the stadium and turn the entrance plaza into a scary, alienating space.

The stadium itself, despite the now-routine overemphasis on suites for the swells, promises to be a people magnet, drawing visitors to a new area of eateries, watering holes and shopping, as well as, at long last, a riverfront stroll.

After too many months of brutal politicking, the stadium plan expresses joy in a game that somehow withstands the endless greed and corruption that attach to professional sports. Somewhere in the outfield stands, the architects plan to re-create the one thing everybody loves about RFK Stadium:

Bouncy seats.

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